


Beyond the Ken of Maps

by Frayach



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Dark, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-23
Updated: 2012-05-23
Packaged: 2017-11-05 20:51:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/410894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final battle is being fought at Malfoy Manor, and Voldemort's forces are winning.  Draco is crouched in a corner of what was once his family's grand ballroom wearing his Death Eater robe and mask.  He's paralyzed with fear.  He knows they'll capture Harry and torture him and that Draco will be forced to watch - or, even worse, participate.  He can't bear the thought, but he's too afraid to kill himself.  When Harry finds him just minutes before it's too late, Draco asks him for a final token of his love.  Inspired by Reira's <a href="http://reira-21.livejournal.com/25432.html"> The Day Before the War</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond the Ken of Maps

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Reira](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Reira).



> This story was inspired by a breath-taking artwork by reira_21 (on LJ) titled [ The Day Before the War](http://reira-21.livejournal.com/25432.html). This story is dedicated to her in thanks for sharing her extraordinary talent.  
> [LJ Version](http://frayach.livejournal.com/65478.html)
> 
> [PodFic](http://leemarchais.livejournal.com/31885.html) read by Lee Marchais

The mask is hot. Draco can feel sweat beading on his forehead and his upper lip. He’s crouched beside the fireplace in the formal ballroom. Inside, where he’d be safe. His mother had begged for it. A last request before she was killed. Given her pure-blood status, her death was quick and painless. Not like the others he had witnessed. It never ceased to astound him, the dreams of executioners. Ever more vicious, ever more cruel, both to the victim and the witnesses. After all, what are executions but lessons in obedience? Lessons in terror. And he’d taken notes. If there was an exam, he’d be ready for it. Nothing now could persuade him to defect. Nothing. Long ago he’d lost any cause that might ease the pain. There would be no noble death for him. There would be only blood and torn flesh. The slow exposure of viscera and bone. A mockery of the eroticism of stripping for a lover. Nothing but a mad man’s fantasies. His lingering horror would bear no meaning, and that was perhaps the worst thing. Worse even than dying.

Outside, the curses were flying. There is the sound of death screams and the smell of burnt wool and flesh floating through the broken window. He clutches his wand in his blood slicked hand. The smell is not yet thick enough to erase the scent of Harry on his skin. The scent of shame.

Harry had waited until it was almost too late. After years and then only weeks before the final battle. Hate, he claimed, had stopped him. Draco hadn’t argued because the real answer was clear enough. Harry still trembled when they kissed. The knowledge of all but certain death makes men seek out the things that until then they’d only dreamed of. It tears paths through their hearts, and they learn to crawl like supplicants. 

The floor of the ballroom is coated with dust except where breezes through the broken window have swept it aside to bare the gleaming floor. _It’s Unplottable_ , Harry had told him. _And the sheets are clean_. As if Draco cared about clean sheets anymore. The first time, he’d come there with his mask still on. As though it had melded with the flesh and bone of his face. It hadn’t disgusted Harry, and it was the last thing he’d removed. Black robes, black trousers. Everything but the mask, which eventually he’d lifted almost reverently as though beneath it lay a hidden treasure. A longed for gift. Draco had not looked away or closed his eyes. Harry was not the one before whom he’d repent. Such contrition belonged only to God.

The clamour of feet echoes through the empty manor. They’d used the runners in the halls for wrapping up bodies, and every sound now reverberates like a drum. The runners kept the stink at bay until it had behooved the Dark Lord to burn them. Draco wonders who the footsteps belong to. Friend or foe. He chuckles softly. Friend or foe. He’d long ago forgotten which is which.

Over the past few weeks, he’d asked himself whether he, if he caught him alone, would kill Harry or let him go. It kept him awake wondering. Sometimes he thinks he’d kill Harry. A nice clean _Avada Kedavra_ , and he’d Banish his body so the Dark Lord could not defile it. But then he’d start wondering where Banished bodies went to. Did they cease to exist or did they end up far away, appearing suddenly somewhere out of thin air, startling villagers on a distant island or the wildlife in a far off forest? Did it even matter?

It was usually in the hour before dawn that he asked himself this question.

He thinks he can bear anything but the injuring of Harry’s hands. He knows that if Harry is taken prisoner and tortured for the amusement of the Death Eaters, that no part of his body would be spared. The moment they touched his hands Draco knows that he will break, knows that his knees will no longer hold him up, and they will know. Once Carrow had captured a man and his wife. With a flip of a Galleon, it had been determined who would slaughter whom. The wife had won, and the way she’d wailed as she cut each beloved limb from her husband’s body had curdled Draco’s blood. If they found out . . . if he revealed his reverence of Harry’s body, he knew he’d be forced to finish the job. And he knew he’d be too much of a coward to tell them no.

Those hands. Calloused and scarred. Etched with words. I must not tell lies. And they didn't. His hands told no lies. Though his eyes may have sometimes seemed cold or his mouth unyielding, he could not delude Draco with his hands. They cupped his chin, his thumb caressing his cheek. That undid the buttons on Draco’s shirt without fumbling. His words were often curt and few, but his hands spoke for him. Stroking, cradling, spreading, clutching. Harry’s hands held magic like water. His palms were creased with lines just as the palms of all men, but unlike other men, there was no life line. Draco could not tell if this was a good or evil omen. 

He could not bear the thought that he, himself, might be forced to answer that question, cutting a life short at seventeen.

He’d told Harry once that if he would be forced to watch Harry tortured to death that it would break him, although he could not imagine what “breaking” might entail. After all, the wife had endured her husband’s death at her own hands without dying, herself, in the process. The parent had endured the screams of his child. Draco himself had lived through the death of his mother. He suspected the terrible truth was that people did not actually break. In the moment of their torment, they did not die themselves. Or go mad. Madness and death might come later, but not when you needed them the most.

A curse thrown from somewhere in the garden shatters another window. Along with the smell of ozone, he can now smell the heliotrope. It makes him gag. He’s always hated heliotrope. Its cloying scent, obscene in its desperation, works its way into your clothes like smoke. Glass tinkles on the floor. Still no one comes to the door. Draco crouches further into the shadows’ embrace.

 _Touch me_. Draco had always wondered why Harry thought he needed to be told. As if he could do anything but touch. And kiss. And offer himself up. _Touch me_. It was like a plea for pardon. A prayer for forgiveness. Why he would ask such a thing of a Death Eater and a coward, Draco had no idea. It should have been the other way around. _Come here_ , he’d always say, in two words expunging the boundary between them. _Don’t_ and _please_ often followed. Words with single syllables as if all the books ever written were unable to say what he needed to say and only silence could speak the truth.

The sleeve of Draco’s robe sticks to streaks of blood on his forearm. He’d done it before he’d been ordered to conceal himself, kneeling on the floor of his childhood room and clawing his way through skin and tendon trying to erase the stain of the Mark. It had made him sweat the stink of shame. The back and armpits of the shirt beneath his robe are wet. He’d been told the Order has dogs that could detect a human body from a mile away. Why can they not smell him when he can so clearly smell himself? Did he still smell so much of Harry that they were confused?

His thighs ache from holding himself in a crouch for so long. His mind is nearly numb with terror. One way or another, he is going to die. If the Order wins he will die in Azkaban, and if the Dark Lord wins he’ll die for being a coward, for not being able to do what he’s sure he’ll be asked to do. _Lucius’ brat should be the one to carve his lover to pieces_. Because they _will_ know. Draco will weep, he will not be able to stop himself, and they will know. Too many times had he been missing from his watch. Too many times had there been bruises on his neck and throat when he’d returned. If only they’d known from whom. They might have killed him then and there, and he would have escaped this long wait. This endless night crouching silently while barbs of memory tear at his mind, pulling it apart like so much meat on a hook.

He wonders whether he’ll scream. Would Harry want him to? Or would his wretched sobs only make the torture worse? Will Harry scream? Or will he simply offer up his bare skin to the caress of Draco’s knife? Draco thinks it will be the latter. Harry is always quiet, both in pleasure and in pain. Only his breathing quickens. He will not give up his pleas to the Dark Lord. He will not beg to be spared. He won’t even beg Draco to make it quick. He knows already that Draco will have no choice.

The room Harry would take him to was empty except for a bed and a toilet. There was a brown ring around the inside of the bowl, and it didn’t flush properly. But the sheets were always clean and smelled of spring. When Draco buried his face in them he could almost remember the month of April with its fresh winds and thawing earth. That’s when they'd started – what? Their relationship? Draco snorted. Their love affair? It was now late June, a month he’d never cared for despite that fact he’d been born in it. There had been no windows in the room, no carpet. Just wood and cracking plaster and silence save for the sound of their bodies slapping together like waves beneath a pier. There was nothing to mask the wet suction, the pants of exertion. It sounded loud in Draco’s ears and embarrassed and excited him. Sometimes when it was over and their breath had returned to normal, Draco could hear water running in the toilet’s tank. It was tawdry and unbearably dear. All of it. He would gladly trade a palace for that one room, that room somewhere beyond the ken of maps.

Did Harry sleep there? Did he weep into his pillow like Draco did? Draco didn’t know. It was hard for him to imagine Harry weeping. He doubted if Harry had even cried as a baby. It was as though he’d bargained with some god and come out the winner. If he cried when Draco was forced to slice him slowly to death, Draco would not be able to bear it. He’d have to carve out his eyes. Those remarkable eyes. It was two months to the day. Blindness would be the anniversary present he’d give to both of them.

Suddenly, as if he’d conjured him out the shadows, Harry appears in the doorway. Running with his head down so he can't be seen through the windows, Harry crosses the room to where Draco now is kneeling. A question is on Draco’s tongue when Harry touches his mouth with a finger, silencing him. “Your side is winning,” he whispers. “They’re taking prisoners.” Draco merely nods as though a long foreseen doom is being meted out. He holds Harry’s gaze with his. “I thought I’d not be able to find you. I looked everywhere.” Draco would like to tell him that he is hiding because he doesn’t want to have to kill one of his former classmates or their parents, but in fact he is merely hiding because he is afraid to fight, afraid to die, although soon he suspects he’ll wish he’d done both.

Harry’s gaze becomes more urgent. “They’ve cast a tracking spell on me. It won’t be long until they find us.” Draco only nods again and tries to swallow. “They’ll take me alive,” Harry says. “I still have knowledge they want to torture out of me.” The memory of the husband and wife surfaces in Draco’s mind. “They won’t succeed though.”

“I know,” is all Draco can say.

“I wouldn’t have been able to keep you out of Azkaban,” Harry says. Draco’s throat seizes up. “I couldn’t have borne that.”

Draco laughs although it comes out more as a cough. “What would you have done?” he says. “Kill yourself?”

Harry dropped his gaze. “Probably not,” he says.

“Because you’d be afraid to?” Draco asks.

“No,” he answers. “Because I’m needed alive. People need me.”

Draco’s heart turns over in his chest. “You wouldn’t be afraid,” he repeats dully.

Harry shakes his head. “Death doesn’t scare me,” he says, and suddenly a helpless rage fills Draco’s mind.

“You fucking bastard,” he says. “What _are_ you afraid of then?”

“Leaving you at their mercy,” he says without stopping to think. “Sooner or later they will kill you, Draco. You know this. One way or another, slowly or quickly, they will kill you.”

“They’ll make me kill you first,” Draco replies, the rage draining from his body, leaving him as weak as a boned fish. His eyes fill with tears, and he feels them pool in the crevices of the mask. Harry bites his upper lip and turns away.

“Hurry,” he says hoarsely. “Tell me what to do.”

“I will go mad,” Draco says. “I will . . .” There are footsteps in the hall. Draco can tell from the nails in the soles that they are Death Eaters. The sound hardens his spine, and he seizes Harry’s chin with his hand, forcing him to meet his eyes again. It’s his left hand. He leaves blood on Harry’s skin.

“Please,” he says. “Make it quick.”

Harry swallows and nods. It’s the only answer he needs.

Through the door, figures in black fill the room. Their masks are whiter than bone in the moonlight. They are the mirrors, Draco knows, of himself. What are they thinking seeing Potter, their greatest prize, kneeling before one of their own, Potter’s hands on his shoulders. Draco cannot guess. He can see over Harry’s shoulder that their wands are drawn and pointed at Harry’s back. They will Stun him and then Petrify him, and it will be too late.

The first time and every time after that, Harry had begun things by running his hands over Draco’s skin. Every inch of it. He’d start at his feet, sliding his fingers between Draco’s toes, and then upward from there, he’d caress his legs. It had surprised Draco that this ritual did not turn him on. Not in any kind of ordinary way. All the time, Harry would hold his eyes, and his gaze was too serious to allow for seduction. He’d dip his thumb into the imprint of Draco’s navel and trace circles around his nipples before finally coming to rest on Draco’s lips.

“Take off your mask,” Harry murmurs. “I need to look in your eyes. I need to know that this is really what you want.”

Shaking, Draco lifts his mask. “I’d rather it was you,” he says, echoing almost the same words he’d said when Harry had asked him if he was a virgin. Drawing a deep breath, he removes his hood and mask and offers himself up. Again. For the last time. Harry presses his wand tip into his throat, his hand shaking, and leans forward to brush Draco’s lips with his own.

“This is why?” Draco whispers. “This is why you came to find me after all that time. So that you could be the one?”

Harry kisses him quiet. “Where ever you go, where ever you find yourself, don’t forget me.” His whisper is barely audible. His wand caresses Draco’s jaw. “ _Avada_ ,” he says, softer than a lover’s comforting murmur at the moment of entry. “ _Kedavra_.”


End file.
